A Midsummer night’s Meme

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Vice

Adobe Tells Users They Can Get Sued for Using Old Versions of Photoshop

"You are no longer licensed to use the software," Adobe told them.

A list of resources for beginning/intermediate musicians!

Woodwinds 🎼

(A quick note - cork grease is an absolute must for all woodwind instruments EXCEPT the flute. Please for the love of all that is holy do not put cork grease on your flute. It will tarnish the joints and can cause them to get stuck together.)

Flute

How to Clean a Flute: DO NOT PUT CORK GREASE ON YOUR BABY.

Basic Flute Warmups

Oboe

How to Clean an Oboe

Basic Oboe Warmups

How Your Reeds Are Made: See why they’re so expensive now?

Clarinet

How to Clean a Bb Clarinet

How to Clean a Bass Clarinet

Basic and Advanced Clarinet Warmups

Bassoon

How to Clean a Bassoon

Bassoon Warmups

Saxophone

How to Clean a Saxophone

Alto Sax Warmups

Tenor Sax Warmups

Bari Sax Warmups

Brass 🎺

(Clear your spit valve regularly. Extra spit sloshing around in there will degrade your instrument over time. Besides, we can hear you gurgling and it’s not pleasant. Here’s how to clean an icky-sounding brass instrument.)

(French) Horn

Basic Horn Care: Horns need special attention because of their rotary valves. It’s important that they’re properly maintained.

A List of Horn Warmups

Trumpet

How to Clean a Trumpet

Trumpet Warmups

Trombone

How to Care for Bass and Tenor (regular) Trombones

How to Oil/Grease Your Slide

Low Brass Warmups & Maintenance

Baritone/Euphonium

Baritone & Euphonium Daily & Monthly Cleaning

Low Brass Warmups & Maintenance

Tuba

Cleaning a Tuba: If you have a rotary valve tuba, stop right there. Cleaning a rotary valve tuba the wrong way can damage it. Please see Basic Horn Care for how to maintain rotary valves. If you have a regular ol’ piston-valve tuba, see How to Clean a Trumpet.

Not sure what kind of tuba you have? Check here.

Low Brass Warmups & Maintenance

Strings 🎻

(If you’re having problems with your violin/viola/cello/bass, talk to your teacher or a luthier. Stringed instruments are delicate and can be damaged easily.)

For All Stringed Instruments:

Here’s all about rosin.

Instrument storage

Warming up

Got bridge problems?

Violin/Viola

No violin tips list would be complete without a link to TwoSet. Violas proceed at your own risk.

Violin & Viola Basic Maintenance

Violin Tuning: If you are a beginner, it’s usually not a good idea to tune using the pegs.

Viola Tuning: Again, beginners should not use pegs to tune.

A comparison of clefs

Cello

Cello Maintenance

How to Sit

Double Bass

How to take care of your monster of an instrument

Tips for Double Bass

Percussion 🥁

For All Percussion

Percussion Tips

Timpani

Weird Timpani Facts

Tuning Tips

Choir 🎤

Choral Singing Tips

Learning to Sight Read

Basic Music Theory

How to Sing in a Group

yeah I have a sneaky suspicion this is going to be how my Saturday looks lmao I'm so ready to be done with this term

the semester ended yesterday and today i have a hangover and my period

Strong bond

(via)

Water moodboard

oh to be at such peace

Apropos of nothing let me say that while I absolutely agree that Joe and Nicky’s “Depends on the century/We fight for what we think is right” answer to Nile’s question about whether they’re the good guys is partially a reference to their murder-related meet-cute situation, when it comes to who might be feeling guilty about the decisions that led them there…one (1) person in that relationship signed up to travel to a foreign land and conquer a city full of people (which, famously, ended in a massacre) on the grounds of My Religion Says We Should Be In Charge Here, and his name is not Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad al-Kaysani. 

Was I theoretically aware of how tall Aabria Iyengar is? Yes. Had I truly processed it until seeing this image? No.

One of my personal nitpicks for historical fantasy is a lack of servants, staff, subordinates, and... idk... subjects? Like, their absence is not... a total dealbreaker for me, depending on the situations the characters are in and whether or not I can just assume that other people are there in the background... but so many of the protagonists in historical fantasy stuff are higher-ranking (very often royalty), and/or have busy jobs, and/or have enormous houses that would necessitate having at least part-time staff.

Like, girl, you should have a maid! WHERE is your chaperone?! WHO is driving this carriage?! Where are your footmen? Are you trying to imply that a WEALTHY DUCHESS is taking a CAB?! You know that you probably have tenants, right? Where is your steward?! Where is your lawyer? Your accountant?! (Like, yeah, you're not going to have your lawyer living in your house, but you HAVE one, right???)

Or, man, you're supposed to be a military commander and you don't even have a single secretary?! Where is your SQUIRE?! (In the spirit of historical fiction, I am jumping wildly across time periods with every sentence here.) Man, I know you aren't looking after your own boots. Where are your GUARDS?! Who set up this tent for you?! Who is looking after your horse?! Who is making and carrying the incredibly valuable maps people are recklessly stabbing daggers into?!

SOMEONE has to be scrubbing these floors and delivering the mail and cooking the meals, and they're probably all DIFFERENT people! My dentist has at least three different receptionists and we can't even get ONE for our court wizard here? A sorcerer's apprentice to take notes? Sherlock Holmes can get away with just having a housekeeper and taking taxis, sure, but your character is supposed to be a KING?! Why is he answering his own front door? He's going to get assassinated.

Like, yes, I understand that a lot of servants in certain places at certain times were supposed to make their labor invisible, but there have always been servants who still had to interact directly with the masters of the house?! Yeah, there are potentially really messy ethics here, class divisions are bullshit, but I don't think ignoring the reality that humans have ALWAYS been doing work for other humans (even if it's just having a collective cooking pot for the group and the cook not necessarily being subservient to anyone) is better than just including some servants and employees? Because a complete absence of them, especially where logically for the worldbuilding there MUST be servants, often makes me think that your main characters just don't care enough to notice the "lower class" people or know their names.

Also, even Frodo Baggins had a gardener and Samwise Gamgee might be the best damn character in the story?! Sam saved the world?! Servants are PEOPLE. Servants are often the funniest and most interesting characters, tbh, with the most to say about a society and its workings, and also the joke of some romantic scene being carefully orchestrated by a stage crew of servants frantically diving into bushes to stay out of sight never gets old to me. Team work makes the dream work!

I don't want to gatekeep historical fiction, especially not historical fantasy, because the worlds don't necessarily have to conform to our own and may have magic and characters are often in very unique circumstances, but... sometimes I pick up a story and it's like... "Author, please tell me that you know there is a difference between a butler and a valet?!"